Salt Creek Township, Muskingum County

How Salt Creek Township, Muskingum County began

Salt Creek Township was organized March 8, 1815 (a county history quoting the commissioners' journal gives March 9, 1808) in southeastern Muskingum County, taking its name from Salt Creek, where a Marietta company began boiling brine for salt as early as 1795-97. Captain John Chandler, a Connecticut native, arrived with his family of nine in the spring of 1799 and became the township's founding pioneer, giving his name to the unincorporated village of Chandlersville that grew up around his mill. The township built the first brick schoolhouse and the first circulating library in Muskingum County, and its salt works were worked out and abandoned once stronger brine was found elsewhere in the state. Today it remains a rural township of about 1,150 people with no incorporated municipality inside its 28 square miles.

Settled 1799 (John Chandler family), incorporated March 9, 1808 per the commissioners' journal quoted by Everhart (1882); March 8, 1815 per Wikipedia and the usgenwebsites township history, by Captain John Chandler and family, from Connecticut.

Where the name comes from

The township and its creek were named Salt Creek for the salines (natural brine springs) along its east branch, worked commercially from 1795-97. That east branch itself was locally called "White Eyes," said in the 1892 county memoir to honor George White Eyes, a young Delaware man educated at government expense at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), out of respect for his father's friendship with the settlers.

Before the town

No mound, village, or treaty site inside Salt Creek Township's present boundaries is documented in the sources checked. The one specific link is the name itself: the 1892 county memoir records that the east branch of Salt Creek, where the pioneer salt works stood, was called "White Eyes" for George White Eyes, a young Delaware man educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), out of respect for his father's friendship with early settlers. Muskingum County as a whole was Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware (Lenape), and Mingo country before 1795, and salt licks such as this one were known and used by Native people before white settlement, but no source we found places a named village, camp, or treaty boundary specifically within Salt Creek Township. The broader Native history of Muskingum County includes the documented White Eyes Town near the Tuscarawas-Muskingum confluence (in present Coshocton County, not this township) and the Adena/Hopewell mound-building era.

Nations recorded here: Delaware (Lenape).

Timeline

1. 1795-97 — A Marietta company discovers salines on the east branch of Salt Creek and begins manufacturing salt, the first industry in what became the township.
2. 1799 — Captain John Chandler and his family of nine arrive from Connecticut and build a cabin within three days of arrival, becoming the township's leading pioneer family.
3. 1802 — Captain John Chandler completes the township's first house, a double log building with puncheon floors near the later brick house in Chandlersville; the only nails in it are wrought-iron ones Chandler made for the doors.
4. 1803 — Stephen Reeve is married to Mary Briggs, the first marriage in the settlement; Zachary Chandler marries Fanny Bingham a year later, and the first child, a Reeve, is born in August 1805.
5. 1804 — Captain John Chandler is acting postmaster as early as this year and holds the office many years, the mail coming weekly on horseback; a daily mail to Zanesville begins July 1, 1880.
6. 1805 — John Chandler's third son erects the township's first mill, used chiefly for grinding corn; a grist mill followed before 1807 and burned in 1811-12.
7. 1808-03-09 — Everhart's county history quotes the commissioners' journal for March 9, 1808 granting a petition for the townships of Cambridge, Salt Creek and Falls; Wikipedia and the township history on usgenwebsites date Salt Creek's organization to March 8, 1815, a discrepancy these sources leave unresolved.
8. 1810 — Zachary Chandler probably begins the first tannery, and 'Jerry' Joseph becomes the first professional blacksmith; Captain Chandler himself had kept the first forge.
9. 1811 — The Salt Creek Baptist Church is organized, the township's first congregation.
10. 1811 — Captain Chandler's wife dies, the first white person's death in the township.
11. 1812 — Bernhard Brewster opens the first store, about this year, and Dr. Daniel Bliss, the pioneer physician, arrives with his saddle bags.
12. 1814 — William Scott builds the first distillery and accidentally sets it afire while sampling his whiskey; he dies in the fire.
13. 1815 — Zachary Chandler opens the first tavern, 'Zach Chandler's hotel,' in a frame building, a relief to neighbors who did not care to put up travelers; five years later it is kept by Mr. Cuberday and burns.
14. 1823-24 — The township's first five male schoolteachers, all college graduates, begin teaching, and the county's first brick schoolhouse is built there, holding 60 to 70 pupils.
15. 1826-10-03 — The township trustees issue a warrant to warn Benjamin Pegg and family to depart the township as paupers, the constable's fee being 50 cents.
16. 2020 — The census counts 1,153 people in the township.

Stories

The salt works that gave the creek its name

Before the township had a name of its own, its future name was already fixed by what lay under the ground along its east branch. A Marietta company found the salines there in 1795 or 1797 and began boiling brine down to salt, an operation the 1892 county memoir treats as the true beginning of white activity in the area, years before Captain John Chandler's family arrived to farm. The works never grew large; once richer brine was struck elsewhere in Ohio the local salt trade faded out, but the creek, and later the township organized around it in 1815 (or 1808, by the commissioners' journal), kept the name. The stretch of the same creek where the works stood carried its own second name, White Eyes, remembered in the county memoir as honoring George White Eyes, a young Delaware man sent to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) at government expense out of respect for his father's friendship with the settlers moving in around him.

Schools and a library ahead of their time

Salt Creek's pioneers put an unusual amount of effort into education for a rural township of scattered farms. The 1892 county memoir credits it with the first brick schoolhouse built anywhere in Muskingum County, a building large enough for 60 to 70 pupils, and says the first five men hired to teach there beginning in 1823-24 were all college graduates, a rarity on the Ohio frontier. The township also organized the first circulating library in the county, roughly 150 volumes that residents could borrow, at a time when books of any kind were scarce and expensive west of the Alleghenies.

Old Bung-My-Eye Moore

Salt Creek Township had no professional blacksmith until 'Jerry' Joseph arrived in 1810, Captain John Chandler having done his own smithing at the first forge. About 1812 William Moore entered the trade to compete with him. Moore was, Everhart's county history says, a clever workman and also a marvelous story teller and singer, whose favorite was a character song called 'Old Bung-My-Eye.' He is represented as singing it with convulsing effect, and he was called Old Bung-My-Eye Moore by the neighbors, a name by which he was remembered long after. The pioneer doctor, Dan Bliss, who arrived in 1812, was remembered the same way, as a genial man whose countenance was a welcome medicine. The first tavern, Zachary Chandler's frame hotel of 1815, had a monopoly, the history says, and nobody complained of its straw beds and tallow-dip candles.

Local history sources: usgenwebsites.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Muskingum County Water - Se96% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Dunfalls Association, Inc.4% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)

Bridges rated poor (3)

Money issues on the ballot since 2017: 1 of 1 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-24
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2021 to 2022, released 2024-07-30

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